This Christmas we are welcoming a new big box store to the long list of these harmful retail agents—Spirit Christmas. Spirit Christmas is a spin on the famous Spirit Halloween chain which makes much business during the Halloween season.

Spirit Christmas, an awkwardly named store, features a wide range of Christmas decor and goods much like its Halloween themed sibling.

Currently there are 10 stores throughout the US in New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts and in our own backyard in Pennsylvania.

Although our nearest store is located in Erie, the infection of such stores is threatening to spread to many more locations throughout the US. If this experimental release proves fruitful, the corporation plans to add more stores in the next winter season.

The problem with this growth of corporations, especially in the Christmas season, is that the many mom and pop shops around the nation are already competing with stores like Target and Walmart (in their need for greed). Adding yet another corporate retail store is sticking another knife in their hearts.

Those of you Gen-X and older can testify: big box stores dominating smaller local shops is a relatively new thing. Prior to the insanity that is modern capitalism, many mom and pop shops flourished in towns.

“In the 1950's, small businesses accounted for 58% of total domestic output,” reports BizIQ.com.

With big stores like Walmart’s and others not so psychical as Amazon’s, growth in the 90s and 2000s, they acted as a finalizing force into the demise of independently owned local stores.

According to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, “active business owners in the United States plummeted by 3.3 million . . . from February to April 2020,” because they just couldn’t hang on through Covid after being on the ropes trying to compete with the big guys.

Thankfully, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, small businesses are finally making a small resurgence (over “70 percent of small business leaders expect revenues to grow over the next year” per the US Department of the Treasury) after buying online became the norm.

But to support more big stores like Spirit Christmas we are turning on small businesses and denying the American people of a more fair market where hard working people can make their mark in business.

Although the convenience of finding almost anything in a big store can be rewarding, stores like Spirit Christmas often sell low quality goods at high prices. This raises the question: is it really even worth shopping at big stores when small stores offer better prices and higher quality and unique goods?

Even our small town of Beaver cannot escape the doom of small business, with many setting up shop and closing in a few years after failing to lure customers from beckoning big box retailers.

Don’t be fooled by the shiny snowflakes and elves, Spirit Christmas hurts small businesses. And that’s not part of the Christmas spirit.